#brianflota

In a live setting the band is explosive. The demented distortion on Turtle’s beat-up acoustic guitar turns relatively simple chord progressions into the aural equivalent of tobacco spit. And Billy Brett dives headfirst into every song, managing to combine the spirit of a snake handler, a Pentecostal preacher, Henry Rollins, and Iggy Pop as he contorts himself, delivering full-throated screams, practically working himself into a trance. Buck Gooter is one of those rare bands whose music is wholly original and distinct. Nobody sounds like them, and nobody ever will.

 Their new album, Stainless Steel Mirrors, their fourteenth, drops tomorrow. At the end of February, I sat down with Billy Brett in an Indian American restaurant whose window sign inspired the typography for the new album art. We talked about the album, his approach to music, and his love for David Bowie.

You’ve got a new album coming out?

Billy Brett: Yeah.

 It’s got ten songs on it. You usually do about ten songs an album right? How long did it take to record it? Was there something different about the process this time?

We were both really focused on it. We basically wrote it for nine months. We started in February of last year.

 Is that the longest you’ve taken to write an album?

Just to write it and then practice it into the ground. And then at the last minute we changed a bunch of stuff up. Really the last practice before we recorded it we changed all these things, which is hilarious. It was real easy to record. When we record we just do it all in one take.

 I find you to be a totally chill dude. But when you get up on stage you just rage and I love it. Do you have to work up to that for a show or recording? Is performing a place you like to get that energy out?

It doesn’t really take much for me to get to that point. I’m not an angry person. It’s just sort of the material and the feel of everything. The tension is normally just there to bring it off that way. I don’t feel like I’m really angry when I’m playing but I’m definitely bringing down some kind of vibe. If the music’s bumpin’ from the start I’ll just feel it and get right into it. Or if something happens, like Terry messes up in that process, I’ll get even madder. Or more like anger. At least it would look that way. I think about that a lot. People are like, “Why are you screaming?” It’s part of the music, for sure. I’ve always kind of been like boiling over in a lot of ways. I don’t think of it as a negative thing.

 It’s great watching Buck Gooter play because you two have such different approaches on stage.

Terry’s a great foil.

 In at least three Buck Gooter songs you mention rats [“Rat On,” “Rat Layer,” and “Dead Rats”]. And in songs like “No One Owns the Sky,” politics seems to sneak in. Do you try to sneak in political topics into your songs or is it just a fractured or surreal way of looking at the world around you?

Sometimes you just get an idea about what you want to write about or sometimes things just come to you in a stream of consciousness way. Sometimes terms just look good, feel good, resonate in some way so you write about it. I’m thinking about the instances of rats, especially the song “Dead Rats.” That was just real. There were dead rats in my house, and it stank (laughs). It just sounded cool.

 We’ve got a new one called “Rat Layer.” The “rat layer” concept came from a conversation we had with our friend who was talking about how he needed to redo his basement. He said that he needed to raise the floor up, pour more concrete on the floor, because the guy that did the floor said that what he’s got is okay. But it’s called a “rat layer.” It’s just there to keep rats from digging into your basement. So then I was like “you’ve got to pour a rat layer over your heart” to keep the vermin from digging into your heart. I guess a rat would be something you wouldn’t want in your heart, in that context.

 When I reflect on rats I suppose I think of danger: vectors for disease, destructive pests. I know those animals can’t help it but from a human perspective a rat represents a negative thing but also something fascinating. So they pop up in my songs as some sort of ominous element.

 A lot of times you just see things that you like and come up with lines and expand upon that. It’s just a writing trick. Just try and go as far as you can with one concept. Sometimes, I call them “Iron Maiden songs.” You have a very defined concept, like a movie. And I just write a song about that movie. Basically interpret it or summarize it in your way. That’s fun. Those take a little less thought and feeling though. It’s cool to push across a message that people don’t know. It’s just obfuscating the reality.

So you’ve done four records with Don Zientara. [Editor’s note: Don Zientara is the engineer who recorded most of the early DC hardcore punk records released by Dischord Records. Recently he was featured in the DC episode of [Sonic Highways](http://www.hbo.com/foo-fighters-sonic-highways), Dave Grohl’s HBO documentary series.] How did that relationship start?

In the earliest days of Buck Gooter, I went to see Joe Lally [the former bassist of Fugazi] play in Charlottesville. He was doing a solo tour with Don. There I met both of them at the show beforehand. So we chatted all night long. We hung out pretty hard and we talked and Don suggested that we get into this DC3 recording project that was going on, which was aimed to record bands from DC that were young. We were neither of those things but somehow they let us come in and cut some songs for free in the studio. Don didn’t engineer that one. This other guy, Hugh, did. And then we just kept in touch with Don and played shows with him.

 I bet we’ve played like 20 shows with Don. I asked him how much it would cost to record and it seemed affordable. So we recorded one record. Then we didn’t record with him for a couple of years. Then we went back and we’ve just been doing records with him since. I love Don and I love what we do with him. I think we could do it with somebody else alright. But Terry’s really into it. So we wanna keep it going that way.

 Don’s recorded some legends: Bad Brains, Henry Rollins, Minor Threat, Fugazi, Void, Rites of Spring, The Dismemberment Plan, Black Tambourine, Foo Fighters. So does he ever regale you with stories?

Every time we record, it seems like The Evens are going to record the next day, which is Ian MacKaye and his wife [Amy Farina]. Now I think Joe Lally’s in that band. And when we recorded The Spider’s Eyes, he had already done preliminary interviews for that Foo Fighters documentary, that Sonic Highways thing. And then the next week they were gonna come in and do everything (film in his studio). I think when we recorded this one, Dag Nasty was coming in a day or two later to record their album. And he (Don) just doesn’t care.

 I’m not really sure how old he is. He’s older than all the people on the scene. And he had a whole career before he started being a professional engineer. He just decided to knock off and do this and be self-employed. He’s a really interesting dude and there’s so much about him I don’t even know. I’ve had a million conversations with him, spent a lot of time with him, and there’s stuff I just don’t know about him. Pretty much everything that came out of that Sonic Highways thing I was like, “I didn’t know that”!

 Once we were in Germany and we were at Armin Hofmann’s house, the guy who put out Witch Molecules, and he was like, “Oh, I have this record by Don Zientara from the 80s.” I was like, “You mean CDs?” He says, “No, a record.” He goes and gets this record from like 1987. It’s this project he did called The Earth Hell Band. It’s this weird industrial electronic album that he just engineered and played a little bit of guitar on. But, I mean, he never told me about that record. The next time we saw him he just gave me a copy. There’s a lot to Don. He’s a great guy. I love recording with him. I love being in that studio. It’s an ideal situation. I wish we could do more there or pay him better. It puts stuff into perspective when you go to that place.

 You garnered an early-career endorsement from Henry Rollins. How early in the history of Buck Gooter did Rollins come to like you guys? How did that go down? Do you have much contact with him today?

It happened really early. When we recorded at Inner Ear [Don Zientara’s studio], we took that set and put it out on a CD. This was back in 2006. I went to Fort Reno in DC to see Antelope that year, probably Joe Lally, maybe both, and Ian [MacKaye] was there. Ian was the guy who had paid for the studio time. I gave Ian a CD of the recording. Then he writes me a postcard and says, “Hey man, can you send me a couple more copies.” I said, “Okay.”  And then he sent those to Henry. And then Henry sent me an email saying he needed a copy of everything we had done. It was just two albums at that point. The second album was called TV Evangelist Song. The first album was called What the Hell? I sent him both of those and then I just kept sending him stuff. And he was real into it.

 He had this radio show out in California and he would write these notes about every band he played on his radio show. I think it was an Internet radio station. I never heard it live but I have the recordings of those shows from the times he played us. He would write little things about every song, how he found the record, or what he thought about the song. So he wrote about us quite a bit back in the day. And it made it into a book of his. He just collected all those writings in this book about his music collection called Fanatic. We’re in Fanatic Volume 2. Terry always calls it Fanatic Volume 4 though I don’t even think there is a Volume 4. It’s cool. It’s actually kind of a fun book. It has an index and you can if Henry talked about some band you just thought about and look it up. It’s an honor to be in that book. It’s cool. Present-day contact-wise, I write him every once in awhile. Any time we have an activity I write him and tell him what we’re gonna do.

Stainless Steel Mirrors by Buck Gooter

Back in January, David Bowie died. Is Bowie your favorite musician?

Yeah. Pretty much. Yeah.

 When did you first get into Bowie?

My grandmother and aunt were really into David Bowie. My aunt’s seem him like 150 times or something like that. Like every tour from 1974 on. Basically from the second tour he made of America and everything after that. I always knew they were into it. I didn’t really dig into music until I was 13. It was because they turned me on to like all this music. When I was 13, my grandmother got me a stereo. She was an early computer-head. And she burned me stacks of albums. All of these fuckin’ albums. Burned CDs, back before people were really burning CDs. 1997 or 1998. Something like that. The stuff that she burned me then I still listen to.

 At some point she burned me the whole Bowie oeuvre. She was really into Outside, which is the record from 1995. The first time I got blown away by Bowie was the “Hallo Spaceboy” CD single. The Pet Shop Boys remix. That is a badass CD. I always followed [Bowie] from then on. I saw him twice. Once in New York City. He played the whole Heathen album and then the whole Low album.

How does Bowie influence you musically?

I don’t know if he really does musically. He’s just, like, everything. The only reason I was making music was so Bowie could hear it and give me feedback one day. Not that he’s gone I don’t know what I’m doing this for, haha.

 You’re a big fan of 80s music by legendary sixties and seventies musicians that is often saddled with a bad reputation. Like 80s Neil Young, David Bowie, Iggy Pop.

I’m a big beat guy. I’m not nostalgic for 80s music. I just like the sound. They were engineering music in a way that it was all sounding the same. It was a big beat, but without rap.

 What are you thoughts on Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA?

It’s amazing. That snare drum! That song is amazing. What I contribute musically is beats. It’s a natural thing. I’m not trying to copy that. That’s where my head’s at. I’ve played with drummers. I know drummers. They do things differently and don’t think like that.

 Is percussion your first “instrument,” or primary instrument?

Yeah that’s what I’m about. I consider myself a percussionist that gets other things going. Like the synth I’ll jab keys here and there.

 And treat it as a percussion instrument?

Yeah. Even with the theremin, it’s like jabbing it. My fury with the theremin is just sort of like following Terry but I’ve augmented over the years to make it more like a rhythm with him. I used to think of it as “twin leads” but then I realized that twin leads doesn’t necessarily mean two leads playing at the same time. It means trading leads. When I realized that I took into a more rhythmic section and he would do a lead and I would do some kind of flourish to differentiate from my rhythmic theremin playing. To me it is an Earth-shattering, insane sound. But when you hear it recorded it just sounds like “wee-wee wee-wee wee-wee.” It’s been hard to get to come across as a tone on all levels. Live it is very abrasive and disruptive. Over time I’ve been able to get the tone so that it’s a little more “bottom-y” because I run it through a pitch-shifter that’s shifted low. So it always has this “grrrr” to it.

 Can you discuss your affinity for so-called “outsider” music?

I identify with it. I’ve been called that.

 What about that music appeals to you?

A lot of it has to do with sound and a lot of it has to do with knowing that it’s a raw expression. I identify with that raw expression. Like The Shaggs. I don’t know if I identify with The Shaggs but I definitely FEEL The Shaggs. The song “Philosophy of the World” is so punk. “You can never please anybody in this world.” That is the philosophy of the world. Hasil Adkins, that’s my boy. That stuff’s incredible. He’s an outsider. He was making weird mutant rockabilly music in the 1950s from the hollers of West Virginia. He might as well have been doing it in outer space. At least he had some visitors in West Virginia. He was sending out demo tapes way back in the day trying to get somebody’s attention. He basically lived a crazy rowdy life and wrote ridiculous music. I love him, man. And from most accounts, it sounds like he was a cool guy.

 …

 Brian Flota lives in Harrisonburg, Virginia. He is a Humanities Librarian at James Madison University. He is the author of A Survey of Multicultural San Francisco Bay Literature, 1955-1979 (2009, Edwin Mellen) and the co-editor of The Politics of Post-9/11 Music (2011, Ashgate, co-edited by Joseph P. Fisher). Brian has also contributed music reviews to the All Music Guide, The Fiddleback, and The Collapsar.

Cover image, “Buck Gooter - LIVE @ the Little Grill Collective - Harrisonburg VA - 7/5/08”

Now, without further ado, here we go. If 2016’s new music is half as good as 2015’s was, we’re in for a treat.

 P.S. Happy holidays from all of us at The Hairsplitter! See you in the future.

 Andrew Arnold

1.      Kendrick Lamar, To Pimp a Butterfly

Such a needed album at the right time. Maximizing what the form can accomplish.

 2.     Father John Misty, I Love You, Honeybear

My wife hates him. My friends question the man. But there’s no doubt his lyrics are funny and thoughtful.

 3.     Sleater-Kinney, No Cities to Love

Solid album. A strong return after some time off. Even better live.

 4.     Leon Bridges, Going Home

Don’t care if he’s retro- or neo-soul; he’s doing his own thing. One of the albums I still sing in the shower.

 5.     Vijay Iyer Trio, Break Stuff

Hard to rank this above Washington’s, but I listen to this album and hear all the jazz I love.

 6.     Sufjan Stevens, Carrie & Lowell

Not an easy listen, but my favorite Sufjan Stevens album since Illinois.  

 7.     Kamasi Washington, The Epic

Aggressive and wonderful.

 8.     Alabama Shakes, Sound & Color

Someone once told me Alabama Shakes were bullshit. Everyone has an opinion, but this album shows growth and exploration while staying themselves.

 9.     The Internet, Ego Death

Found this one late in the year. A great mix of influences into an album better listened to as whole than separate tracks.

 10.  Songhoy Blues, Music in Exile

Sure, I don’t know the words. But a great blues album speaks its own language.

  Matt Austin

1.     Oneohtrix Point Never, Garden of Delete

The sound of a thousand browser tabs opening simultaneously.

 2.     Battles, La Di Da Di

Their first truly instrumental record, Battles show their roots in Storm & Stress and Don Caballero by fusing their fractured melodies with the hesitant riffage of their previous groups. 

 3.     Beauty Pill, Beauty Pill Describes Things As They Are

Triumphant return for this long-running ensemble, wrapping samples and rock instruments around solid songwriting.

 4.     Napalm Death, Apex Predator - Easy Meat

More than three decades in the game, and with this lineup for two, the grindcore vets prove they're still capable of making vital music. 

 5.     Holly Herndon, Platform

Finally, an art record that is presented like one, utilizing technology as a channel for disconnection, alienation, and the calming dose of human touch. 

 6.     Matthew Aker, Whitest Hunters, Blackest Hearts

A collection of analog synthesizers soundtrack a lost Cannon film. 

 7.     Prefuse 73, Rivington Não Rio / Forsyth Gardens EP

Warp’s loss is the world's gain as Guillermo Scott Herren returns from the wilderness with more pointillist instrumental hip hop.  

 8.     David Gilmour, Rattle That Lock

Lyricism was never Gilmour's strong suit, so while Polly Sampson provides the words, Gilmour delivers the most affecting collection of songs in his spotty solo career. 

 9.     Freddie Gibbs, Shadow of a Doubt

Drugs, dames, and death are still the order of the day, but Gibbs has never been afraid to branch out, either with adventurous producers or utilizing his low-key but effective singing voice. 

 10.  Enya, Dark Sky Island

For the Irish trio this is truly stripped-down: only 50 vocal tracks, barren piano, and their trademark plucked string section takes a couple songs to make an appearance. 

  Jeff Boyle

(in no particular order)

 ·      Midori Hirano, And I Am Here

·      Beauty Pill, Beauty Pill Describes Things As They Are

·      Nils Frahm, Solo

·      Umfang, Umfang

·      United Bible Studies, The Ale’s What Cures Ye

·      Jlin, Dark Energy

·      Claire Potter and Bridget Hayden, Mother to No Swimming Laughing Child

·      Dr. Yen Lo, Days with Dr. Yen Lo

·      Hilde Marie Holsen, Ask

·      AGF/Various Artists, A Deep and Mysterious Tone

   James Brubaker

1.     Sufjan Stevens, Carrie & Lowell

One of the most beautiful and difficult albums released in my lifetime. I’ve listened to Carrie & Lowell less than any other album on this list, but that’s only because of its power. This is emotionally devastating stuff.

 2.     Kendrick Lamar, To Pimp a Butterfly

At long last, Kendrick Lamar dropped To Pimp a Butterfly and it was worth the wait. I kept forgetting to put this album on early drafts of my list because it already feels bigger than 2015 in a timeless sort of way. Lamar’s fusion of funk and hip hop sounds like a future hip hop is going to embrace in a major way.

 3.     Grimes, Art Angels

This isn’t what I was expecting from Grimes … but then, what does anyone ever expect from Grimes? I love this album for many of the same reasons I loved Grimes’s last album—it plays with pop tropes while turning the genre inside out. But the thing about Art Angels is that, while Visions kept its pop impulses at arm’s length, deconstructing the form until we were left with echoes and snippets, here, Grimes embraces pop signifiers while balancing them with enough leftfield weird shit that the end result is as wild and art damaged as any of us possibly could have hoped for.

 4.     Carly Rae Jepsen, Emotion

None of us should be surprised that Carly Rae Jepsen gave us one of the best, purest pop albums in recent memory. The hooks are huge, the songs are hopeful and full of the kind of raw passion that only pop can really communicate. The only real surprise here is that this album hasn’t blown up the charts the way it deserves.

 5.     Courtney Barnett, Sometimes I Sit and Think and Sometimes I Just Sit

I’ve listened to this album probably more than any other album on this list. Barnett’s songwriting is fun and whip-smart. And I guess she’s up for a Grammy now? So that’s cool.

 6.     Fred Thomas, All Are Saved

I’ve been following Fred Thomas’s career for over a decade, now, and without a doubt, All Are Saved is his best work to date. Here, all of Thomas’s most exciting songwriting, arranging, and producing impulses converge, resulting in a daring album of emotionally charged songs about love, loss, and coming to grips with the hard shit.

 7.     Joanna Newsom, Divers

Part of me wants to rank this album higher, because it’s a flat-out masterpiece. Maybe the only reason it’s not higher on this list is because it’s Joanna Newsom, and we expect this level of craft from her? Like, we know she’s doing something extraordinary in her writing, performance, and arrangement, but we’re so used to it that it doesn’t really phase us? That’s where I’m at. But wow, what an album.

 8.     Kamasi Washington, The Epic

A huge, sprawling jazz masterwork drawing on decades of influences. This is one of the most exciting jazz albums I’ve heard in years. I’m pretty sure this is the first jazz album I’ve ever put on a year-end list. The arrangements and performances are impressive, but what makes this album so remarkable is its sheer scope and audacity.

 9.     Donnie Trumpet and the Social Experiment, Surf

On the strength of “Sunday Candy” alone, this album deserves a spot on my list. But here’s the thing—even without that song, Surf is such a fun, chill album. I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed just vibing on an album the way I enjoy vibing on this one. The arrangements are impeccable, and Chance the Rapper, while not at his most impressive, shows off a happy-go-lucky delivery that’s pretty hard to resist. Now if only we can get a vinyl release of this thing…

 Tie: 10. Tobias Jesso Jr., Goon         10. Vince Staples, Summertime 06         10. Jamie XX, In Colour

Sorry to cheat, here, but I honestly couldn’t decide between these three albums. Jesso’s songwriting is some of the best I’ve heard in a while; Staples’s LP is a fantastic tour of hip hop past and present, with an impressive and undeniable urgency; and Jamie XX’s album might feature the strongest, fattest production of the year. What’s even more exciting/disheartening, as I had to leave even more amazing albums off of this list because, let’s just face it, 2015 was one of the best years in music in a while. I’m almost hoping 2016 slows down a bit so it’s a little bit easier to keep up.  

  Susannah Clark

1.     Kendrick Lamar, To Pimp a Butterfly 

2.     Sufjan Stevens, Carrie & Lowell

3.     Father John Misty, I Love You, Honeybear

4.     Carly Rae Jepson, Emotion

5.     Courtney Barnett, Sometime I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit

6.     Beach House, Depression Cherry

7.     Joanna Newsom, Divers

8.     The Mountain Goats, Beat the Champ

9.     Tame Impala, Currents

10.  The Tallest Man on Earth, Dark Bird is Home

  Brad Efford

1.     Courtney Barnett, Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit

2.     Sufjan Stevens, Carrie & Lowell

3.     Carly Rae Jepsen, Emotion

4.     Joanna Newsom, Divers

5.     Sleater-Kinney, No Cities to Love

6.     Natalie Prass, Natalie Prass

7.     Dave Rawlings Machine, Nashville Obsolete

8.     The Tallest Man on Earth, Dark Bird is Home

   Brian Flota

1.     Kendrick Lamar, To Pimp a Butterfly

2.     Matana Roberts, Coin Coin Chapter Three: River Run Thee

3.     Lightning Bolt, Fantasy Empire

4.     Aziz Ansari, Buried Alive!

5.     Sleater-Kinney, No Cities to Love

6.     Sunn O))), Kannon

7.     Charles Gayle Trio, Christ Everlasting

8.     Downtown Boys, Full Communism

9.     Arca, Mutant

10.  Bjork, Vulnicura

11.  Slayer, Repentless

12.  Chelsea Wolfe, Abyss

  Dillon Hawkins

1.     Kendrick Lamar, To Pimp a Butterfly

2.     Sufjan Stevens, Carrie & Lowell

3.     Sleater-Kinney, No Cities to Love

4.     Beach House, Depression Cherry

5.     Father John Misty, I Love You, Honeybear

6.     Wilco, Star Wars

7.     Punch Brothers, The Phosphorescent Blues

8.     Godspeed You! Black Emperor, ‘Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress’

9.     Oneohtrix Point Never, Garden of Delete

10.  Sun Kill Moon, Universal Themes

  Garrett Karrberg

Pile, You’re Better Than This

For Pile to beat out a new Local H album is nothing short of a miracle. I can’t figure out what makes this record so infectious, but I haven’t stopped listening since March. The formula is simple – heavy and catchy – but it reveals something new with each listen. Another home run for Exploding in Sound Records.

 Local H, Hey, Killer

Local H released the radio hit “Bound For the Floor” almost twenty years ago, but they’ve put out one great album after another since then and the duo is far and away the best live band I’ve ever seen. Hey, Killer is the first to feature new drummer Ryan Harding, but his chemistry with guitarist/singer/sort-of bassist Scott Lucas is immediately apparent. If you like rock music at all, check this record out, dig into Local H’s back catalog, grab some earplugs, and go see them live.

 Broken Water, Wrought

A mix between their hometown Olympia, WA sound and the punkier elements of Sonic Youth. Wrought is unabashedly political throughout, but closes with the gorgeous twelve-minute “Beach,” featuring legendary Lori Goldston on cello. Also, Shawn Reed from Night-People Records helped design the stunning album art.

 Chastity Belt, Time to Go Home

The dual guitar lines and melodies on this album are something else. The lyrics are funny, feminist, and delivered with an emotional weight not always found on indie rock records this catchy.

 Royal Headache, High

The second standout album from this Australian garage punk band. Hook follows hook for a too-brief twenty-eight minutes while lead singer Shogun’s soul-tinged vocals alternate between a forceful snarl and measured croon at just the right moments.

 Jim O’Rourke, Simple Songs

This album was a revelation for me. I was only peripherally aware of Jim O’Rourke before this year, mostly through his work with Sonic Youth. This album sounds so fantastic that it sent me down the rabbit hole that is Jim O’Rourke’s solo and collaborative back catalog.

 Jessica Pratt, On Your Own Love Again

On the surface, Jessica Pratt is a singer-songwriter of the 60s folk variety, but such a description sells her woefully short. Pratt distinguishes herself through her hauntingly beautiful vocals, some psychedelic influences, and melodies that reveal themselves more profoundly with each listen. This is significantly better than her 2012 debut album, which was very, very good.

 Radkey, Dark Black Makeup

Debut full-length from this hardworking band of three homeschooled brothers from Missouri. Heavy, sing-along rock songs with cool guitar riffs and Danzig-inspired vocals. Wouldn’t be surprised if Radkey was soon selling out arenas.

 Mount Eerie, Sauna

Phil Elverum built a magical world of organ, distortion, crashing cymbals, gentle strumming, some black metal, and the background vocals of Ashley Eriksson, Allyson Foster, Geneviève Castrée, and Paul Benson around his lyrics. Ranging from short and poppy to the ten-minute-plus drone of “Sauna” and “Spring,” this album feels like a culmination of Elverum’s music since making the shift from The Microphones to Mount Eerie.

 METZ, II

I might be swayed a little too much on this one because of how incredible METZ is live. Not sure if II will stand the test of time, but I keep coming back to recall the rush of seeing these loud, noisy rock songs performed in person.

   Brian McBrearty

1.     Daniel Bachman, River

2.     Deafheaven, New Bermuda

3.     Elder, Lore

4.     James Elkington & Nathan Salsburg, Ambsace

5.     Kadavar, Berlin

6.     Jim O’Rourke, Simple Songs

7.     Natalie Prass, Natalie Prass

8.     Kurt Vile, B’lieve I’m Going Down

9.     Ryley Walker, Primrose Green

10.  Wilco, Star Wars

  Kevin O’Rourke

1.     Godspeed You! Black Emperor, ‘Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress’

2.     Oneohtrix Point Never, Garden of Delete

3.     Battles, La Di Da Di

4.     Jamie XX, In Colour

5.     Deafheaven, New Bermuda

6.     Bjork, Vulnicura

7.     Beach House, Depression Cherry / Thank Your Lucky Stars

8.     Colin Stetson and Sarah Neufeld, Never were the way she was

9.     Tame Impala, Currents

10.  The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die, Harmlessness

  Jeff Simpson

1.     Panopticon, Autumn Eternal

2.     Kendrick Lamar, To Pimp a Butterfly

3.     Chelsea Wolfe, Abyss

4.     Kamasi Washington, The Epic

5.     Sun Kil Moon, Universal Themes

6.     Deafheaven, New Bermuda

7.     Joanna Newsome, Diver

8.     Prurient, Frozen Niagara Falls

9.     Blanck Mass, Dumb Flesh

10.  John Moreland, High on Tulsa Heat

With this project, Reed, past winner of the MacArthur Genius Grant and a former faculty member of UC Berkeley for three decades, challenges the cottage industry of Ali biographers whom he dubs "The Ali Scribes," who are usually "liberal writers located in the Northeast, who base their admiration of Ali upon his refusal to fight in an unpopular war without noting that he was following the example of his mentor, Elijah Muhammad, who refused to fight in a 'popular war.'" Reed notes that, "Though a few black authors have written books about Ali, it's usually been a white male writers' club. The Ali Scribes have had full access to him, traveled with him, visited his farm." As a result, Reed argues, these books are "either too adoring or make excessively negative assertions." If one comes to The Complete Muhammad Ali expecting a feel-good story, look elsewhere. Reed, as well as the people he interviews, cover the most flattering (his skills as a boxer, his radical rhetoric, his trickster charm as an entertainer, and his status as a world ambassador) and unflattering aspects (his womanizing, his shifting politics, his decision to come out of retirement to fight Larry Holmes, his relationship with Philadelphia gangster Major "Mafe" Coxson) of his life in equal measure. Toward the conclusion of the book, Reed asks his readers the following question: "How does one explain that a man with so many flaws can become so adored and almost an object of worship?"

 Completing Ali: The Influence of the Nation of Islam

 Another intriguing aspect of Reed's book is that his interview subjects mainly fall outside Ali's inner circle, tending to be writers or artists from Ali's generation. In the process, his approach reveals some of the weaknesses of biographical writers with too much access. At what point does a writer with too much access to their living subject have to start censoring material from his or her project because it is unflattering or potentially inflammatory in nature? Throughout the book, it becomes sort of a running joke that Reed is not going to get access to Ali, his wife Yolanda, and other close associates such as Ali's manager Herbert Muhammad (who is one of Elijah Muhammad's children). Reed's daughter (Tennessee Reed) and wife (Carla Blank) become characters in the book, assisting the aging Reed, now in his late 70s, as he tries to interview people with some association to the boxer.  

 But Reed is deft enough of a writer to work this to his advantage. A large portion of the book is devoted to the Nation of Islam (NOI). Reed's interviews with current and former NOI members such as Askia Muhammad, Sam Hamod, Ali's ex-wife Khalilah, the poet Marvin X, Agieb Bilal, poet Haki Madhubuti, and Atar Shakir provide greater context about Ali's complex relationship with the NOI, particularly Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad, as well as his subsequent split from the NOI. His interview with Rahaman Ali, Muhammad's brother, has him going to Ali's hometown, Louisville, Kentucky, visiting Ali's old neighborhood, and interviewing old friends of Ali and his father, Cassius Clay, Sr.

 Reed notes that the "Ali Scribes" are often dismissive of the NOI and its influence upon Ali, and his book serves to rebut these claims, though Reed himself is no apologist for the NOI. He explains, "[The Ali Scribes] cannot comprehend why many intelligent, young, black men, including Muhammad Ali ... and thousands of other young men whose entry into the middle class was launched by the Nation of Islam, or the Black Panther Party, were attracted to these movements." Reed's attitude toward the NOI, and Elijah Muhammad in particular, echoes that of James Baldwin from fifty years earlier. In The Fire Next Time (1963), Baldwin explains:

 Elijah Muhammad has been able to do what generations of welfare workers and committees and resolutions and reports and housing projects and playgrounds have failed to do; to heal and redeem drunkards and junkies, to convert people who have come out of prison and to keep them out, to make men chaste and women virtuous, and to invest both the male and the female with a pride and a serenity that hang about them like an unfailing light. (316)

 This perspective, Reed argues, has been largely absent from other books on Ali. Reed argues that they are generally "caricatured in other books as thugs and lunatics." In his introduction, Reed rightfully claims, "We've all heard about the criminal elements in the Nation, and I talk about those, but other Ali books have ignored the scientists, scholars, journalists, and a Pulitzer Prize winner [photojournalist Ozier Muhammad] who were also members or relatives of Elijah Muhammad."

 Interviews with numerous African American writers and political radicals—such as Bobby Seale, the co-founder of the Black Panther Party—reveal Ali's immeasurable influence. Time and time again, Reed's interview subjects cite not only Ali's skill in the ring, but his ability to verbally toast his opponents, to predict the outcomes of his fights, and his resistance to the draft as their reason for admiring him. Ali's famous statement that "No Viet Cong ever called me a nigger" is repeated numerous times throughout the book. Ali, particularly during this period of his life, provided a model of black male masculinity that resonated throughout many sectors of the black populace, this book suggests.

 In many ways, Reed's asynchronous narrative charts attitudes that match those of the critic Stanley Crouch, one of Reed's interview subjects, about the arc of Ali's life. Crouch explains: "The career of Ali is like that of a bear in the woods. A real bear is not a joke. It will tear a horse to pieces and outrun a man; a bear with a hat on in a circus is a different bear, one chained to a pole; a bear that becomes a teddy bear is totally distanced from the real thing. Ali's career was like that." As a result, Reed and his interview subjects note that the aspects of Ali that endeared him to African Americans, artists, and radicals during the 1960s and 1970s dissipate following his retirement, in part because of his support for President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. Therefore, many of those interviewed found the re-branding (or national "rehabilitation") of Ali as an American hero following his lighting of the Olympic torch in Atlanta in 1996, clearly suffering from the effects of Parkinson's Disease, with mixed feelings. As Reed observes, "The blacks whom I interviewed viewed the scene taking place at the Olympics as one in which someone who was regarded as a sassy Bad Nigger was being humbled to the delight of the millions who had hated him when he was a defiant loudmouth."

Pulling No Punches: Reed Lands Knockout Blows

 One can argue that Reed is as much the subject of The Complete Muhammad Ali as his titular figure. Reed, known for his stinging and controversial opinions, lets them fly throughout the book. Following interviews with notable African American World War II veterans Harry Belafonte and novelist John A. Williams, both of whom experienced brutal racism as soldiers during the War, Reed goes after one of many targets:

 "Tom Brokaw refers to the World War II generation as 'The Greatest Generation'—a generation that, as the line goes, fought against fascism and racism abroad. Overlooked in this feel-good version of history is the fact that members of the greatest generation operated a segregated army and practiced discrimination and even violence against blacks at home, even blacks in uniform."

 Of the presidency of Bill Clinton, he writes, "It was President Clinton, under whose administration more blacks were incarcerated than any time before in history and the iniquitous Welfare Reform bill was signed, which has families eating out of garbage cans ... Clinton was one of the worst presidents for blacks." And on the lack of diversity in the creative writing industrial complex: "Naropa has perhaps the most diverse list of visiting faculty that I'm aware of. All one has to do is examine Poets and Writers magazine to find that the NYPD is more integrated than the conference and residency scene of poets, novelists, and creative non-fiction writers."

 Reed, who has held positions in Ivy League-level institutions for over forty years, views academic and media elites in similar terms: "Maybe millions of ordinary whites know more because, unlike the members of the academic and media elites, which I've said are fifty years behind the south in terms of diversity, these whites work alongside blacks each day." Reed, who at one point in the book describes himself as "a congenital skeptic," makes mincemeat of Ali biographer Jack Olsen's take on the NOI:

 "Jack Olsen, author of one of the best books on Ali, said that Ali's joining the Nation was an escape from reality. He obviously preferred his blacks to be Christian, yet what could be more of an escape from reality than the belief that Jesus of Nazareth, a man who has been dead for two thousand years, is going to suddenly appear in the sky and vacuum all of his followers."

 Boxing with Words: The Place of The Complete Muhammad Ali in Reed’s Oeuvre

 Readers expecting a book like Reed’s early career masterpieces Mumbo Jumbo (1972) and Flight to Canada (1976) will probably be disappointed by The Complete Muhammad Ali. But this is to their detriment. The postmodern aspects of those books, which appealed enough to the poster-child of postmodernism, Thomas Pynchon, enough for him to name-check Reed in his celebrated novel Gravity's Rainbow (1973), are here aplenty: its disjointed narrative structure, its interrogation of the narrative around its subject, its conversational style, its penchant for essayistic asides, its narration of the collection of biographical materials. 

 Since the publication of his underrated and prescient novel Japanese by Spring in 1993, Reed has largely shifted his attention from fiction to nonfiction pieces (as well as his activities with the Before Columbus Foundation, which has, since 1976, worked to promote multicultural American literature). Save for Blues City (2003), a short book he wrote about his adopted hometown, Oakland, California, most of his non-fiction books have consisted of essays. The Complete Muhammad Ali, a project ten years in the works, is his first full-length biographical project, one that, in many ways, harnesses his strengths as a writer. At over 400 pages it is easily his longest book of new writing. Despite its length it is a page-turner. And I say this as a reader fairly unfamiliar with Muhammad Ali's biography prior to opening this book. It does boast a number of typos and stylistic irregularities (especially in the way the interviews are formatted). But, as Abbie Hoffman boasts in Revolution for the Hell of It (1968), "I hope there are a lot of misspellings in the book that get by fussbudget editors and proofreaders. Misspellings get the reader involved" (209).

 At the beginning of this review, I mention the present-day relevance of Reed's book about Ali, despite being about an athlete that was at the peak of his powers over forty years ago in a sport whose fan base continues to dwindle. Ali was a transcendent talent perfectly suited to a transcendent time in history. Since his retirement and the decline of his health, the gains made by African Americans during the 1960s and 1970s have been chipped away by the scourge of crack in the 1980s—largely fueled by a Reagan administration effort to fund the Nicaraguan Contras outside of the auspices of Congress through the illicit sale of cocaine in predominantly black neighborhoods—the rise of the prison-industrial complex and mandatory-minimum drug sentences that were disproportionately aimed at black males, increasing urban gentrification, and the white conservative backlash to the Obama presidency. Reed uses his poison pen to connect Ali's youthful successes in the ring, the corporate, manufactured image he cultivated (with the guidance of his fourth wife, Yolanda Ali) in his post-retirement years, and the current state of racial relations in the United States in 2015.

 Trying to answer the question he poses about Ali's deification in spite of his flaws, Reed invokes the figure of Zeus. He ends his book by saying, "[I]n the case of Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, JFK, MLK, and other among the American elect, and those who seem to be born with a congenital halo, some have more Zeus than others." And while Reed might not have the name recognition of these figures, his writing generates a similar effect. Reed can often offend his readers with a "low blow" or a fallacious argument. But his direct, incisive, and singular brand of satire and social commentary, the subject of which is often the thorny topic of race relations in the United States, has a defiant logic befitting a playful, but serious Greek god who is ultimately concerned about justice.

 In his third book of essays, Writin' is Fightin' (1988), Reed writes, "It was quite generous, I thought, for critic Mel Watkins to compare my writing style with that of Muhammad Ali's boxing style." He then corrects Watkins assessment: "If I had to compare my style with anyone's it would probably be with that of Larry Holmes. I don't mince my words. Nor do I pull any punches, and though I've delivered some low blows over the years, I'm becoming more accurate, and my punches are regularly landing above the waistline" (6). Those expecting a chronological history of Muhammad Ali chockfull of minutia would probably be best served by looking to the books written by the "Ali Scribes." But if you want to engage with the spirit of the man in his time, and get punched by the prose of one of our greatest living writers, The Complete Muhammad Ali is the book for you.

 …

 Brian Flota lives in Harrisonburg, Virginia. He is a Humanities Librarian at James Madison University. He is the author of A Survey of Multicultural San Francisco Bay Literature, 1955-1979 (2009, Edwin Mellen) and the co-editor of The Politics of Post-9/11 Music (2011, Ashgate, co-edited by Joseph P. Fisher). Brian has also contributed music reviews to the All Music Guide and The Fiddleback.

  Works Cited:

 Baldwin, James. Collected Essays. New York: Library of America, 1998. Print.

Hoffman, Abbie [writing as “Free”]. Revolution for the Hell of It. New York: Pocket Books, 1970. Print.

Reed, Ishmael. Writin’ is Fightin’: Thirty-Seven Years of Boxing on Paper. New York: Atheneum, 1990. Print.

At some point between my freshman and sophomore years of high school, I watched The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear in the theater. At least I'm pretty sure I did. My first year of high school was truly awful. I was frequently bullied, mostly because I was relatively small (5'4", compared to the 6'3" I would later grow to) and had yet to hit puberty. The bullying got so bad that I would take labyrinthine routes to get from one class to another to avoid running into a potential threat. When I got home, my step-father would berate me for not being the (step-) son he wanted me to be. So one thing that offered me a reprieve that year was movies. That was the summer of Hitchcock, Kubrick, and Romero. Really, though, it was the summer of David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker. 

 In Naked Gun 2 1/2, directed by David Zucker and based on Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker’s Police Squad, there is a segment that draws its influence (and humor) from Psycho's infamous "shower scene". The parody's humor is generated because the woman in the shower, Jane Spencer (played by Priscilla Presley), starts shower-singing "The Way Were Were," made famous by Barbra Streisand, in the movie of the same name. A nefarious intruder, prior to his attempt to kill her, starts singing along with Jane in nearly perfect harmony. Frank Drebin (performed by Leslie Nielsen) arrives, confronts the intruder, and saves the day. At the time I had no idea what they were singing. This was the first time I heard "The Way We Were."

         ~

 I first met Jill Talbot in August, 2007 in Morrill Hall at Oklahoma State University. We were office mates, sharing the same tiny, low-ceilinged space where I often hit my head. Little did we know that we would end up sharing that same shabby, beige office for four years. We had both recently been hired as Visiting Assistant Professors in OSU's English Department. We got on quite well, but our friendship didn't fully blossom in those first few months on the job.

 One day, she gave me a copy of her first book, Loaded. Being curious about my new office mate, I read the book over the span of a few days. It was filled with personal details that would make most people blush: one-night stands, drug experimentation, a descent into alcoholism, affairs with married men, a stint in rehab, becoming a single mother. This was quite a bit of information to process, not your typical "hello" from one new officemate to another. After reading her book and processing the experiences she describes so frankly within its pages, I found her to be quite courageous. I don't think I would be capable of admitting things like that to another person who I barely knew, let alone to an entire reading public.

 The book itself was entertaining and insightful. It was also a first book. Jill is still struggling to find her style in the pages of Loaded, often deferring to her literary heroes: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Jack Kerouac. In fact, they often speak for her. This left me yearning for more of my new literary hero: Jill Talbot.

 Our tastes differed. Where she preferred Fitzgerald, I preferred Nathanael West; her Hemingway, me, Dos Passos; her Kerouac, myself Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs. She also spent plenty of pages in Loaded writing about her dream-man Robert Redford. I'm more of a Paul Newman man myself. At any rate, Redford, the future male lead of 1973 Sydney Pollack movie The Way We Were, led Jill to the title of her second book, The Way We Weren't.

In the pages of The Way We Weren't, published by Soft Skull Press in July, we find the experience of Hemingway, the road-poetry of Kerouac, and the swinging music of Fitzgerald. We find few of their words. In Jill's characterization of Kenny, the absent father to their daughter, Indie, we find the ideal Redford. The hard truth of Jill's book, though, is that "the ideal" never strays, but the real does time and time again. 

         ~

 During our four years as officemates, Jill and I became really good friends. When not in the office, we would go to Buffalo Wild Wings, play trivia, and discuss embarrassing amorous misadventures or exchange departmental gossip. She would drink Pinot Grigio and eat a plain chicken breast, while I would have whatever bad beer was on special, popcorn shrimp with extra cocktail sauce, and french fries. Back in the office, I would constantly play music on my crummy Dell laptop while toiling away on my research. Often, a long-forgotten hit from the 1970s would come on and we would revel in it. Things like Starbuck's "Moonlight Feels Right," Rupert Holmes' "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)," and Player's "Baby Come Back." She swears a Rolling Stones song was playing when she gave birth to her daughter Indie, but can't remember which one. Though unlikely, part of me hopes it was the song "Heaven," a deep-cut from their album Tattoo You, and probably the group's most ethereal song musically.

 Many of the things she related to me during those years made their way into The Way We Weren't. It is fascinating to see how, in retrospect, Jill was filing away these experiences, anecdotes, memories, scraps of details, away, for some bigger purpose. I was in attendance when she read a work in progress at an off-campus event that became the basis for the "Single Mother" chapter of the book. In its current iteration, Jill watches a four-year-old Indie play in the leaves strewn about their front yard. Instead of joining her daughter, Jill stays in the living room drinking Chardonnay. After relating the story to her counselor, he asks her what want she wants to change. Jill answers, "I want to play in the leaves with Indie." 

 The piece hits all of Jill's preoccupations as a writer up to that point: her struggles with alcohol, her complicated feelings about her ex-boyfriend Kenny, her life as an itinerant academic and single mother to her daughter Indie, and her writerly obsession with deconstructing memory. This early draft represented huge leaps forward in the quality of her prose, her organization of narrative ruptures in time, and how to relate uncomfortable poignancies to her audience. 

 Since then, I have been blessed as a reader and a friend (a friend who anonymously appears in the book on page six, a friend who "recently," and rudely I might add, "asked when she's going to stop [writing about him], write something else") to read each new work of hers with awe, watching her develop into a master of her craft. She asks, in the third person, "How long do we live in the fictions of our past? And how do we convince anyone that who we write is not necessarily who we are?" These unanswerable questions form the backbone of her writing.

         ~

 The early sections of The Way We Weren't in some ways revise certain aspects of her first book, Loaded. This time around, her writing is more playful, more circumspect, more abbreviated. For instance, in the section "Colorado: 1999-2003," the events of September 11th, 2001 are completely overlooked (though it is mentioned later in the book). More important is a bottle of 2000 Fess Parker Santa Barbara Viognier, with a "solid base of yellow apple fruit with a hint of resentful undertones." It is these little things, these isolated memories, that she chooses to hang onto, rather than macro-socioeconomic concerns, that elevates The Way We Weren't into the realm of pure literature. 

 Whether its a broken wine glass, a writing desk, a vintage trunk, a news radio program about single mothers, a neighbor's operatic voice, a kitchen table with blue chairs, or a postcard, these things add up, forming each specific fiction we tell ourselves about ourselves. Talbot is not afraid to spice things up, adding postmodern elements, such as redacted and seemingly official court documents regarding child support payments (or lack thereof), a "wine list" around which to frame her recollections of Kenny, and a college syllabus titled "The Professor of Longing," which assigns short stories such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" and Pam Houston's "Cowboys are My Weakness" to relate her economically lean year as an adjunct instructor in Boise, Idaho.

 As the text winds forward chronologically, Talbot's anguish over being abandoned by Kenny, an anguish that becomes her identity during these years, then gives way to other identifications. A particularly telling memory finds her in a Stillwater, Oklahoma bar, reading a copy of The Great Gatsby. A fellow drinker, after being informed by the bartender that Talbot is a writer, asks her if she wrote it. Talbot writes, "I am polite, say no, and understand that the world I live in has no meaning for him whatsoever." In another memory, she recalls driving to Oklahoma City and hearing a discussion on NPR about being a single mother. This gives way to a thoughtful consideration of her place within academia and the world of letters. More importantly, when considering the impact of this identity on her daughter Indie, she bluntly acknowledges that "in my life, the father is not an option on the school's who-can-pick-up list."

 Though The Way We Weren't is built around the repercussions of the heartbreak Talbot experienced when Kenny left her and her then four-month-old daughter, it transforms into a road narrative. She writes about her final move to New Mexico, "We've got this down, she and I, packing the trunk with our suitcases and her small TV with the DVD player, the lamp, and the sleeping bags--what we will live on and with until the U-Box arrives." The later sections of the book are filled with residential upheaval and assorted characters that populate each new landscape: the solider with PTSD, the opera singer who works at Wal-Mart, the carbon monoxide leak in the university house, the threatening alcoholic boyfriend of the landlord. 

 As much as The Way We Weren't speaks to the challenges of single-motherhood, it also speaks to the havoc wrought by the adjuncting crisis in academia. Her book lays down the harsh realities of adjunct life as tellingly as any book on the subject. Talbot doesn't give it to us that simply, though. In the Epilogue, she argues, "We are not our autobiographies. We write the way we were. Or the way we weren't. Either way, it's fiction." As with the best creative nonfiction writers, she gives we the readers reality without resorting to documentarian means. Embellishment, erasures, fabrications, and understatement are just some of the tools of the creative nonfiction writer that Talbot has mastered in The Way We Weren't. I cannot wait to see what she writes next.

 …

In that time they have released seven spazzo albums that have always teetered on the precipice of the great beyond. And on tracks like "Forcefield" (from 2001's Ride the Skies), “Bizarro Zarro Land” (from 2005’s Hypermagic Mountain), and "Transmissionary" (from 2009’s Earthly Delights) their music, like a Tasmanian Devil of noise, nearly disappears into plumes of cyclone-propelled dust. Toward the end of their riotous concert DVD The Power of Salad and Milkshakes (2003), one female fan describes the band at their pavement-chainsaw best this way: “It’s kind of like if Tom Selleck split in half and had a band.” That pretty much nails it.

 Elsewhere on the DVD, bassist Brian Gibson says, “I just think that if somebody got my guitar set up—I feel like it's taken me years and years to like develop this like insane set up that I have—they're just gonna be good. Whatever you do sounds good through it. You know, plucking the string. It just doesn't with pedals or anything else. Just be super loud and you're all set.”

 Despite a series of critically acclaimed (though not necessarily canonized) albums, it may come as a surprise to some fans of the group that until the release of their newest effort, Fantasy Empire, the duo had never recorded an album in a proper studio. The band generally recorded “live” to tape in practice spaces. In an interview with Pitchfork’s Marc Masters, drummer and vocalist Brian Chippendale admits that, for their latest album, “We just needed a new process.”

The good news for Lightning Bolt fans is that despite the bolstered audio quality the essential Lightning Boltyness remains on Fantasy Empire. If anything, the album presents the group at their most refined; the up-tempo opener “The Metal East” proves that within its first twenty seconds. This is followed by “Over the River and through the Woods,” which recalls material from Ride the Skies and Wonderful Rainbow (2003), records that capture the group at the peak of their popularity … until about halfway through the song, that is. In that earlier period, there was a playful goofiness, almost a cuteness, that made their rather uncompromising and unusual approach to music making all the more accessible. With Hypermagic Mountain and Earthly Delights, for me their masterpieces, that early-period zaniness transforms into exhaustive attempts to pulverize their intricate riffs into the ground, concision replaced with maximal, albeit mathy, drone. The second half of “Over the River and through the Woods” captures this approach, and it forms an enervating counterpoint to the early part of the track.

 Lightning Bolt makes some subtle adjustment to their sound through Fantasy Empire. “Horsepower,” to a certain extent, and throbbing pulse of “Runaway Train” are bolstered by what must be considered, at least for Lightning Bolt's standards, “guitar” solos. Bassist Brian Gibson has an unusual setup on his instrument. His bottom string is actually a banjo string, which allows him to create those Eddie Van Halen-style runs that distinguish him from other bassists. On these two numbers, Gibson appears to be using a slide to create noisy yet contained excursions, which is unusual for a group whose bread and butter is creating tight, intricate, prog rock-like riffs played at warp speed. Therefore, these solo-like moments are rather refreshing. Another thing the listener notices is that both Brians appear to simplify their playing on the album. Drummer Brian Chippendale's drumming, usually Animal-like in its vertiginous speed and barely-controlled chaos, is about as straightforward as we have heard it since the band's eponymous 1999 debut.

 The one major exception is the closing number, “Snow White (& The 7 Dwarves Fans),” which features some typical nutso Chippendale drumming. The eleven-minute number is appropriate. The group’s two previous albums, Earthly Delights and the underrated Oblivion Hunter (2012), both featured ten-plus minute closers. While “Snow White” might not be as good as Earthly Delights’ “Transmissionary,” it certainly possesses more variety, featuring several distinct sections.

 With Fantasy Empire, Lightning Bolt again reveal themselves to be stubbornly fixed to one musical vision. For most acts, this results in failure. Few have succeeded, most notably AC/DC, Motörhead, and the Ramones. Lightning Bolt works within confined limitations (one drum set and a modified bass), no doubt, but Fantasy Empire once again proves that the two Brians can make two instruments sound like a million midnight orchestras strapped to electric chairs. Their latest album is not innovative or revolutionary and does not speak to important cultural or social issues like To Pimp a Butterfly or even Carrie & Lowell do, but it sure will make your ears ring longer … just like all their other albums. And that's powerful too.

 …

There are many motivations for getting the old gang back together. The biggest one, of course, is money. After the gigs and royalty checks start to dry up, those personality clashes that made working together so tough in the past are suddenly ameliorated. Another one is the rekindling of youth, or attempting to recapture that old exuberance and spirit that, for one brief moment in time, generated such excitement. For certain acts, especially ones that languished in relative obscurity during their original tenure but who've garnered belated critical acclaim and popularity, a comeback constitutes a big "I told you so."

  While these types of reformations have generally been greeted by music lovers with eyeball-rolling dismissal, there has been a change in this dynamic in recent years. For whatever reason, a whole spate of recent reunions or returns from extended hiatuses have resulted in fresh musical reinvigoration. The New York Dolls, Mission of Burma, Dinosaur Jr., Godspeed! You Black Emperor, My Bloody Valentine, Aphex Twin, and Death from Above 1979, just to name a few, have breathed fresh life into their once-stalled careers and contributed relevant music. Even D'Angelo, who fell off the face of the Earth nearly fifteen years ago following the release of his wildly successful album Voodoo, surprised everybody with a late-year release, Black Messiah, that immediately vaulted itself into Album of Year discussion.

  When Sleater-Kinney surprisingly announced they were recording a new album and prepping for a tour in late October of last year, there was a practically universal, positive response to the news. Sleater-Kinney, long one of my favorite bands, was always a well-respected band during their primary years of musical output (1994-2006), releasing at least four classic LPs, Call the Doctor (1996), Dig Me Out (1997), One Beat (2002), and The Woods (2005). Because they remained on an independent label, Kill Rock Stars, until the release of The Woods, which was put out by Sub Pop, one of the bigger indie labels, they never gained the mainstream popularity of contemporary acts like Soundgarden, Weezer, or Blink-182 despite drawing consistently high praise from the critical community.

I first saw them live in 1999—yes, it was that long ago!—at The Roxy in Hollywood, California while they were promoting the release of The Hot Rock (1999). The group, tightly wound like a circus top, created a buzzsaw of manic sound, their musical gifts readily on display. Lead guitarist Carrie Brownstein bopped around the stage like a young Pete Townshend, playing the guitar with gleeful abandon. Behind her, drummer Janet Weiss worked at hyper-speed, often putting in twice the number of fills that one heard on the records, giving the songs the ferocity they demanded.

  In stark contrast to the spazzy activity of Brownstein and Weiss was the lead singer and rhythm guitarist Corin Tucker, who rarely strayed from her position in front of the microphone stand. Somehow, without seeming to strain her throat at all, she regularly emitted an operatic, banshee wail from her relatively subdued frame, giving the songs emotional heft, an emotionality that often clashed with and buoyed the playing of her bandmates. I was so impressed by them, after only having discovered them months earlier when I first heard what is for me their masterpiece, Dig Me Out, that I would see them six more times over the years. The only other band I've seen perform live that many times is Sonic Youth.

  Since Sleater-Kinney announced they were going on an indefinite hiatus in 2006, their legend began to slowly build, as did the riot grrrl movement from which they emerged. Work such as Sara Marcus's Girls to the Front (2010) and the Sini Anderson documentary The Punk Singer (2013)—about Bikini Kill and Le Tigre frontwoman Kathleen Hanna—have brought much-needed attention to this important scene. Carrie Brownstein formed and subsequently disbanded the successful all-star group Wild Flag with Janet Weiss and ex-Helium and current Ex Hex frontwoman Mary Timony while Corin Tucker formed the Corin Tucker Band, which was a modest success. But the single thing that elevated Sleater-Kinney's star above all other things was the surprise popularity of the IFC show Portlandia, co-starring Fred Armisen and SK's own Carrie Brownstein. The at-times brilliant show not only pokes fun at the citizenry of Portland, Oregon, but also managed to out-hipster the hipsters by making fun of them before it was cool! Brownstein's comedy chops have elevated her to celebrity status. In the process, Sleater-Kinney's reputation has grown by leaps and bounds.

  While I tend to be indifferent or even downright hostile regarding comebacks of this sort, I'm actually glad for Sleater-Kinney. They deserved this much attention back then, so it's fitting they should be receiving it now. Plus it helps matters that their new album, No Cities to Love, is quite good and only serves to cement their reputation as one of the greatest rock acts of the last twenty-five years.

(Photo via Wikimedia Commons / by Charlie Llewellin)

  Right in the opening moments of the album's first track, "Price Tag," it's clear that Sleater-Kinney has not lost a step. The urgency, claustrophobia, and butterfly-in-the-stomach excitement present in their best material is all here. Janet Weiss's mastery behind the drum kit serves to propel each number at a feverish pace. Interestingly, Brownstein and Tucker sound more technically proficient as guitarists than ever before. Yet this quality is diminished and simultaneously enhanced by the way the guitars have been recorded. Their almost plastic sound recalls 80s recordings by the likes of Big Black. For a more contemporary comparison, they bring to mind the scratchy, almost keyboard-like quality of the guitar playing found on last year's self-titled album by St. Vincent (especially on "No Anthems").

  Though indie rock is less interested in electric guitars than at any point since Sleater-Kinney went on hiatus, Brownstein and Tucker make it clear that they are never going to put their guitars in the closet. These guitar textures permeate the album, and are even more apparent on one of the album's best early cuts, "Surface Envy." One of the group's less celebrated strengths is their knack for creating catchy choruses. Try not singing along to earlier songs like "Little Babies" or "Words and Guitar," for instance. It just so happens that No Cities to Love is replete with catchy choruses. The title track on the new record boasts the catchiest chorus, as does "Bury Our Friends," probably the best of the songs on the album's second half. These infectious refrains highlight Tucker and Brownstein's voices while providing the perfect foil for their abrasive guitar textures. In short, Sleater-Kinney opens up their bag of old tricks and uses most of them to maximum effect here.

  Though Sleater-Kinney usually includes a few down-tempo numbers (think of "Buy Her Candy" from Dig Me Out or "A Quarter to Three" on The Hot Rock), there really aren't any to be found here, with only the closer "Fade" coming close. Just because every member of the group is in their 40s doesn't mean they are ready to rest on their laurels. In fact, what makes No Cities to Love so compelling is how aggressive it sounds. Play it side by side with their earlier efforts and it is difficult to distinguish much difference, energy-wise. There's nothing on here as catchy as early career masterpieces like "I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone," "Dig Me Out," "Get Up," "You're No Rock n' Roll Fun," or "Oh!" But, pound for pound, the thirty-two-minute-long No Cities to Love might be their most consistent long-player, with only "A New Wave" and "Fade" coming closest (to this listener at least) to being just average performances.

  Thankfully, Sleater-Kinney have managed to pick up where they left off, avoiding the arrested development and ego inflation that often accompanies such comebacks. The greatest treat about No Cities to Love is that it serves as a solid introduction to the band's music for listeners who have not had a chance to hear them before. How often can this be said about a musical act's first album in ten years? I can't think of another example.

  …

JAMES BRUBAKER 1. Sun Kil Moon, Benji

Mark Kozelek: suck my cock. Stupid, trollish click-baiting aside, Sun Kil Moon’s Benji is the masterful, confessional folk album music fans didn’t realize they were waiting for. Every second of Kozelek’s autobiographical opus is dripping with pathos and a surprising (especially for Koz) empathy for his fellow humans. This is the rare album that feels bigger than music—this is art, undeniable, raw, and full of life.

2. Grouper, Ruins

Liz Harris is on quite a run as Grouper. Still, as much as I adore her previous output, there’s something extra haunting, and especially gorgeous about the stripped-down, ambient-ish piano jams that make up Ruins.

3. How To Dress Well, “What Is This Heart?”

Here, Tom Krell moves his How To Dress Well project closer to pop music’s naked simplicity while interrogating the basic tropes on which the genre is built. These are gloriously uncomfortable and exposed blasts of pop emotion that dig beneath the genre’s usual surface-level sheen to get at the emotions always lurking beneath.

4. Ariel Pink, Pom Pom

What the fuck, right? Since Before Today, his masterful break into mainstream indie, Ariel Pink has been on a mission to combine that album’s hazy, AM-Gold vibe with his earlier ultra-outsider home recordings. As irritating as Pink’s media shtick has become, the infectious weirdness and maniacal glee of Pom Pom is hard to deny.

5. Todd Terje, It’s Album Time

One of the quieter gems of the year, Terje’s slick, electronic dance music is designed to get stuck in our rhythm bones and make us bounce along in cars.

6. The War on Drugs, Lost in the Dream

War on Drugs: don’t suck a cock, unless you want to, and then, you know, do whatever you want to do that makes you happy. Lost in the Dream could be labeled Dad-Rock, but if that’s what it is, it’s doing it in a way that makes Wilco’s last few album’s sound like Lame-Great-Uncle Rock. These songs are hypnotic and lovely, easy to get lost in and hard to shake. This is, hands down, one of the best guitar rock albums in years.

7. Run the Jewels, Run the Jewels 2

Even better than Run the Jewels’s first album, this collaboration between El-P and Killer Mike is an exceptional blending of old and new, resulting in a confrontational, at times difficult album. But don’t let that scare you away, because as hard as this album feels, these hooks and beats get under the skin and don’t let go.

8. FKA Twigs, LP1

Fuck to this album, please. I haven’t, and don’t know that I ever will. Just, please: put this record on, sit down with your partner and have yourselves a nice old time. If anyone releases a sexier album this decade, it’ll probably be illegal.

9. Perfect Pussy, Say Yes to Love

Say Yes To Love is a perfect blast of riotous punk energy. Meredith Graves’s vocals scrap and scrape to be heard over the band’s volatile blend of crunchy guitar riffs and phat punk beats. This album reminds me a lot of what it felt like to go to basement shows back in the late nineties, but it never feels like a throwback. These are passionate kids making bigger-than-fuck punk anthems.

10. Flying Lotus, You’re Dead

The ten spot was a tough fight on this list. There were a ton of great albums this year, and I had to ultimately give the nod to FlyLo, if for no other reason that You’re Dead is his most dizzying and ambitious album yet. It might also represent FlyLo’s biggest success in terms of blending wild jazz with trippy electro-inflected hip hop beats to dazzling effect. 

  MATTHEW AUSTIN (in no particular order)

  His Name is Alive, Tecuciztecatl

Warn Defever has dabbled in folk, pop, goth, chamber music, noise, jazz, and countless other genres, but this latest full length is a homage to the wah-drenched psychedelic rock operas of the '60s. There's a storyline that connects this song cycle, but the star is Defever's uncharacteristically unhinged guitar playing. 

Horse Lords, Hidden Cities

Bass, drums, guitar, and saxophone grind against each other in intricate, sprawling compositions that occasionally lock together in ferocious ways. 

Mogwai, Rave Tapes

The Scottish band's been a well oiled machine for years, and at this point they're like a painter entering their mature period: they've mastered the tools and techniques, now they're seeing all the different combinations they can create. 

DMX Krew, 100 Tears

Catchy without being sacchrine, Ed Upton has been perfecting his synth & drum machine melange for years, with his latest offering nods to 80s pop, the queasy tones of vaporwave, and videogame music, all in easily digestible 3-4 minute songs. 

Winged Victory for the Sullen, Atomos

Despite its origin as a modern dance score, Atomos works great on its own as a haunting ambient record that manages to sound fast paced. 

Aphex Twin, Syro

It's not surprising that an artist obsessed with recording gear made a record that sounds like his studio made the songs by itself. Not a knock on the result, but it underlines how Richard D. James imbues his equipment with an organic touch that few can replicate. 

Blonde Redhead, Barragan

While the trio haven't exactly been pushing boundaries in the last ten years like they did in the first half of their career, each new album is a return to comfortable mix of gauzy vocals, tasteful harmonies, and just enough rhythmic push to keep it out of easy listening territory. 

Tobacco, Ultima II Massage

Though definitely front-loaded, the latest gooey neon assault from Tobacco dives further into his homemade sound, coming off like a mad scientist with no clear influence. 

Wye Oak, Shriek

While St Vincent collected accolades on her 2014 record, it shares DNA with the similar, but superior, new album of electronic textures and passionate vocals by the duo previously known for powerful guitar rock. Abandoning guitars is a bold move that proves their skills in songwriting remain intact while using different tools. 

Terence Hannum, Via Negativa

As part of Locrian, Hannum helps create walls of brutal noise that takes cues from black metal and power electronics; his 2014 solo album is a collection of drones that, while sometimes barely being present, evoke a dire, doom filled world. 

  JEFF BOYLE (in no particular order)

  Untold, Black Light Spiral

Hobbesian techno. Nasty. Brutish.

Neneh Cherry, Blank Project

Pop music of a sort. Meandering, thoughtful, mature, intriguing.

Kim Hiorthøy, Dogs

A factoring of his previous work down to its constituent parts: mostly piano and drum machine. Liminal, almost forgettable.

Andy Stott, Faith in Strangers

Sludgy, muddy. Dance music for swamp monsters.

Actress, Ghettoville

Sad beats from far away fighting thru a bowl of oatmeal.

Kelly Hogan, I Like to Keep Myself in Pain

One of my favorite voices singing songs written just for her. Lovely.

Jenny Hval & Susanna, Meshes of Voice

Probably the record that knocked me on my ass hardest this year. Angels in a screaming match.

Selvhenter, Motions of Large Bodies

Stompy, noisy, rock-ish improv by Danish women.

Richard Dawson, Nothing Important

Like Daniel Higgs without the overwrought mysticism. Like getting punched in the chest while crying.

Laura Cannell, Quick Sparrows Over the Black Earth

Overbowed violin re-imagining ancient ballads! Improvised recorder self-duets—Roland Kirk style!

Zamilska, Untune

Urgent, violent techno with an ear toward tribalism. Exciting.

UNTUNE by Zamilska

  BRIAN MCBREARTY (in no particular order)

  The War on Drugs, Lost in the Dream

I know I said I was not ordering my picks, but this album is my personal favorite release of 2014.  No more ranking, I promise.   I listened to this album twice a day for the first two months following its release in March.  I still listen to it at least once a week.  Outstanding.

Eno/Hyde, High Life

Dense, textured and layered jams along with some of Eno’s finest vocal work in years.  The climax of the song “Lilac” is one of the best musical moments of this year. 

Strand of Oaks, Heal

This album starts out with a guest guitar solo by J. Mascis and only improves from there.

Kadavar, Live in Antwerp

I consider myself a connoisseur of hard rock live albums and this set from the German power trio, Kadavar, does not disappoint.

Chris Forsyth & The Solar Motel Band, Intensity Ghost

Television without all of those annoying vocals. Haha. Just kidding, guys. I dig Tom Verlane. This album rips.

Steve Gunn, Way Out Weather

This album is a master class in simplicity. Straightforward recording techniques applied to clean, uncrowded song arrangements yield amazing results on this slab. Vibe for daaays!

Meatbodies, Meatbodies

Riff-drenched, fuzzed-out (and drugged-out) bliss. This album is relentless in the best possible way.

Sharon Van Etten, Are We There

The vocal melodies on this album are so good.

William Tyler, Lost Colony

It’s an EP, not an album. Deal with it! I could listen to the thirteen minute opener, “Whole New Dude,” on repeat for the rest of time.

Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell, Check ‘Em Before You Wreck ‘Em

I hate it when hard rock bands feel the need to demonstrate their range. I don’t care. Show me that you can rock, and then do it again, and again. The Shove get it right and deliver rocker after rocker on this album. Just watch this video and try to contain yourself.

Rog & Pip, Our Revolution

A reissue/unearthing of material recorded by two members of The Sorrows. Rocking and sometimes heavy, but still accessible (even, poppy at times). You will like this.   

  BRIAN FLOTA 1. Grouper, Ruins

This group of desolate, haunting, spare piano-based songs make this Grouper’s best effort to date, and one of the most nakedly emotional and understated albums I’ve ever heard.

2. Ariel Pink, Pom Pom

Love him or hate him, Ariel Pink has created a warped AM radio-friendly masterpiece with this album. The stretch of the album from “Nude Beach a Go-Go” to “Jell-o” might be one of the strangest stretches of pop music ever included on an album.

3. Todd Terje, It’s Album Time

Todd Terje’s witty, sophisticated nu-disco album is loaded with infectious hooks."

4. Morgan Murphy, Irish Goodbye

Deadpan comic Morgan Murphy’s slightly warped blend of observational humor, subtle feminism, and one-liners will have you laughing over and over. Sample joke: “Abortions are not for everybody. They’re like children that way.”

5. St. Vincent, St. Vincent

St. Vincent’s self-titled album presents her music at its most sleek and state-of-the-art.

6. Mastodon, Once More 'Round the Sun

Though far from the heights of Leviathan and Blood Mountain, Mastodon's latest lacks a dull cut and synthesizes their earlier, more challenging style with their more recent stabs at the mainstream.

7. Scott Walker + Sunn O))), Soused

This unlikely pairing stretches both acts beyond their comfort zone, resulting in some of the darkest, most theatrical music of the year.

8. Freddie Gibbs & Madlib, Piñata

Gibbs, a gangsta rapper and mixtape legend, is paired with underground producer Madlib, maximizing the talents of both collaborators in the process.

9. Perfect Pussy, Say Yes to Love

Good old fashioned punk rock with a heavy dose of riot grrrl thrown in for good measure. One of the most confrontational recordings of the year.

10. Arca, Xen

Solid ambient music for pitch-black gothic dance clubs.

  KEVIN O’ROURKE

(in no particular order)

  Death From Above 1979, The Physical World

A few months ago I had a Twitter conversation with a friend who noted that DFA 1979’s 2004 album You’re a Woman, I’m a Machine “holds way, way up.” I suspect this one will too. At a tight 35 minutes, this album is pure speed rock.

Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra, Fuck Off Get Free We Pour Light on Everything

Over the years, Efrim Menuck’s whine of a voice has grown more tolerable, and Thee Silver’s songwriting tighter. You know how every Godspeed! You Black Emperor song has its best loudest part, after they’ve gotten the quiet dithering over with this? That’s basically this album, plus affecting Canadian commune-rock vocals and a wall of sound that’s so big it seems to possess a life of its own.

Run the Jewels, Run the Jewels 2

In addition to having an entertaining Twitter presence, El-P continues to prove that he is one of the most important producers/rappers working right now. He and Killer Mike’s DIY Run the Jewels project—which has relied on (initially) free releases and social media word of mouth—may be the most vibrant thing El-P has done since Company Flow. Killer Mike’s lyrics absolutely seethe, and this album’s beats are, to paraphrase Phife Dawg, harder than two-day-old shit. An essential record.

Real Estate, Atlas

Atlas is a little sadder and more morose than Real Estate’s previous outing, 2011’s Days, but that’s not a knock against this record. Atlas is a tremendous piece of guitar pop. See James Brubaker’s review for more.

Sun Kil Moon, Benji

2014 was a mixed bag for Mark Kozelek. His release of Benji—which gets my vote for the best record put out this year, and which is a stunning example of radically honest, open confession folk rock—was overshadowed by that whole “the War on Drugs can suck my cock” imbroglio.

Ignoring Kozelek’s egocentric insanity for a moment, Benji remains a highlight in his already packed discography of highlights. For more, see below for Sun Kil Moon’s live performance of “Richard Ramirez Died Today of Natural Causes.” It’s fitting to close this post on a song that uses the death of the serial killer Richard Ramirez as the launching point for a musing on mortality. To wit:

What we know about the man behind these recordings is just as cinematic and enigmatic (cinegmatic?) as the albums themselves. Randall Aldon Wulff is a Canadian who apparently bounced around until his late-twenties, when he somehow "struck it rich." The reputation of a con man follows him around as he records albums under pseudonyms, hires the well-regarded Los Angeles-based punk rock photographer Ed Colver to take the cover shot for his first album, then pays him with a bounced check. He records another album two years later in Canada under the name Lewis Baloue, a record whose existence was basically unknown until a few weeks ago. From there the trail goes cold, aside from the inevitable rumors of drug addiction and falling on financial hard times, resulting in a conversion to Christianity. He may have recorded some albums in Paris in the late 1990s. He apparently turns up in a recording studio near Vancouver and churns out nearly six unreleased albums of lightly religious music under the name Randy Duke. After that, the trail goes cold again (until, of course, the quiet, mysterious release of two tracks in mid-August). In his mother's obituary, he is not mentioned, leading some to believe that he died, is estranged from his family, or on the lam. Recently, Randall Aldon Wulff was “discovered” at a coffee shop in Canada. This revelation, reported on Light in the Attic’s own blog space, confirms that he is alive, but answers few questions. A cynic might say this is all a hoax or that Light in the Attic is withholding certain information for a big reveal in a possible film project. After all, a documentarian, Jack D. Fleischer, writes the liner notes for both reissues. But if Light in the Attic is holding something back, I don't blame them. This is good stuff and they know it. Even if a key part of the mystery has been solved, the fact remains that both of Lewis’s albums are fascinatingly elusive and beguiling.

  From the first piano notes on the opener "I Thought the World of You," L'Amour sucks you in. Supplemented by a synthesizer that would have sounded out of date even in 1983, played by the equally mysterious Philip Lees (who would later play keys on recordings by Black Street and Fantasia!), and nothing else, the track plods deliberately through its chord progression, establishing Lewis's blueprint. These skeletal numbers are as bare-chested as the mysterious figure on the album cover. Lewis sings in a mumbled falsetto, his words rarely intelligible. His voice is tinged with isolation and sadness, the pain of withdrawal. On the second track, "Cool Night in Paris," Lewis abandons the piano for an acoustic guitar. He is more competent on this instrument, fingerpicking a bluesy pattern that would be completely ordinary if it weren't for Lees's warbled, eerie keyboard accompaniment. Though the track is jauntier than the opener, there is a naked emotionality to the performance rarely found in commercial pop recordings.

  For all my "ahead of its time" rhetoric that will follow, it should be pointed out that, musically, Lewis is by no means a genius or a virtuoso. His verses tend to feature three to five chords, his falsetto often fails him in the higher registers, and his methodical, slow-tempo piano playing suggests only a basic proficiency on the instrument. Furthermore, there is not much variation in his songwriting structure or arrangements. But the magic of L'Amour is how these limitations and (some might say) weaknesses are synthesized to produce a record that shimmers with heartache and heartbreak. This is especially apparent on the breathtaking "Love Showered Me," the album's penultimate song. Throughout the record, lust masquerades as the butterflies that swim in the stomachs of teenagers in love, and disgust dons the countenance of disappointment. Though the record is sad, it is never despondent. On L'Amour, Lewis appears content with love, commitment, and hurt, all from a distant perspective. This is its greatest achievement.

  L'Amour is so unusual because there just isn't much precedent for what Lewis is doing here in 1983. The only contemporaneous album by a major recording artist that does sort of the same thing is Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska (1982). The similarity is most apparent on Lewis’s instrumental track "Even Rainbows Turn Blue." But Springsteen's intelligible, narrative-based lyrics, gruff but powerful vocals, and rock-centric approach to folk have little in common with Lewis's wispy, cloaked singing and turtle-paced tempos. Lees's approach to the keyboard is generally minimal, preferring sustained single notes to chords, making it similar to ambient or new wave recordings from the period. Lewis's brilliant coiffure on the cover would suggest some affinities toward new wave, as would his choice to back his acoustic instruments with a synthesizer. But based on Lewis's compositions and the occasional lyrics that can be made out, it seems Lewis is more familiar with the classy songbooks of Cole Porter and George Gershwin than, say, Philip Oakey or Martin Gore. Oddly enough, "Romance for Two," the album's closer, uses a phrase associated with Frankie Valli ("Can't take my eyes off of you") and looks forward to the Damien Rice hit "The Blower's Daughter." With little precedent for his approach, it's easy to imagine an alternate universe where Eddie and the Cruisers inform Springsteen and L'Amour was released to popular and critical acclaim, subsequently influencing acts like Talk Talk, Bon Iver, James Blake, and any number of unsigned Bandcamp artists. Since this is not the case, we are left with an album whose place in pop culture is as ethereal as its music.

The rediscovery of L'Amour's follow-up, Romantic Times, by the newly christened Lewis Baloue, presents even greater challenges to listeners than its predecessor. Its sudden rediscovery, so close after the Light in the Attic reissue of L'Amour, has led some to believe it is indeed all a hoax. To date, there are only three known copies of the original release that have surfaced. One of them fetched nearly $2,000 on eBay, its seller boasting that there were no Google hits for the album prior to it being posted up for auction. The cover photo is even more intoxicating, with the mystery man himself surrounded by the accoutrements of wealth. According to the Light in the Attic blurb, the album's engineer, Dan Lowe, claims that Lewis appeared to be "under the influence" during the recording sessions for this second album, fueling online speculation that he developed a Jordan Belfort-like dependence on Quaaludes. While this is pure conjecture, the music that makes up these new Romantic Times gives credence to his observation, as it appears more slapped-together than L'Amour.

  Right from the start, Lewis Baloue announces his full-on embrace of synthesizers. While they sounded dated or dubious on L'Amour, they seem fuller, more textured, and professional here. The opener, "We Danced All Night," features a more complex, quasi-flamenco guitar figure, but it is drowned out by the keys and cymbals. The track reaches new heights one minute in when we get our first burst of that quintessentially 80s musical flourish, the slow-burn sax (played by a session musician by the name of—I shit you not—Neil Armstrong). Vocally, Baloue (as I will refer to him from here on out) is erratic. With "We Danced All Night" serving as the album's statement of purpose, we immediately note that Baloue has sidestepped the ethereal realm of L'Amour, settling into a druggier space. This approach is reinforced on "Bon Voyage," whose keyboards and weak synthesized beats warble, keeping the listener off-kilter, as Baloue works in waltz time. By "Don't Stop It Now" and "It's a New Day," Baloue is vocally out of control, missing many notes, sounding like Bryan Ferry if he were to be waterboarded. Vibrato is now a blatant part of his vocal repertoire, making his shaky falsetto tremble even more. Musically, “New Day” devolves into the kind of tune one would expect from a mall organ salesman putting on a strange demonstration, probably right across from the arcade.

  Ironically, there is nothing "romantic" about Romantic Times. On numbers like "So Be in Love with Me" and "Where Did My Love Go Away," Baloue's voice radiates the pain of pure exhaustion. The clunky, infernally slow, preset percussive beat becomes as awkward as a string of bad first dates. By the time we get to the closer, "As the Boats Go By," Baloue's voice practically bursts like a balloon. If L'Amour's philosophy was the Lord Alfred Tennyson maxim "'Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all," then Romantic Times' must surely be that Bob Dylan maxim "Love is a four-letter word." Though I'm predisposed toward darker material over light when given the choice, I ultimately prefer L'Amour to Romantic Times. The pained vocals of the latter are more intriguing and twisted than they are on the former. But the music on L'Amour never drowns in 80s Cheez Whiz quite like it does through much of Romantic Times. These comparisons are ultimately beside the point, though, as it is far more productive to listen to these records as a pair. Together, they form one of the most mysterious portraits in the annals of popular music, akin to a one-man Woodstock and Altamont for the 1980s. L’Amour delivers the era’s romantic ideal: that the trickle-down spoils of wealth can be the ultimate expression of love. Romantic Times displays its disastrous consequences.

  …